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The Championship – a league so chaotic it makes a piano falling down some stairs resemble a Zen garden – resumes with an old-fashioned Easter weekend double header. Automatic promotion, playoff places and the drop into the abyss all remain up for grabs, with only beleaguered Sheffield Wednesday’s relegation rubber-stamped as the contenders jockey for position on entering the home straight. Not a Stone Island jacket will go unworn as fans of all 24 clubs proudly get the badge in before heading off to support their teams over a hectic bank holiday schedule. At the top, Frank Lampard’s Coventry City are in the box seat for automatic promotion, with an 11-point cushion between them and Ipswich Town in third. They will fancy their chances of at least maintaining the gap in tomorrow night’s televised Geographically Quite Near Each Other But Not Really A Derby derby against, er, Derby County. With no Good Friday game due to Southampton’s weekend FA Cup appointment with Arsenal, Ipswich will have additional time to de-Farage Portman Road for Monday’s visit of Birmingham.
In one of the weekend’s key matches, Middlesbrough host Millwall in tomorrow’s early kick-off, where victory for the visitors would see them gatecrash the automatic promotion conversation. “I think there are going to be a lot of twists and turns between now and the end of the season,” said the Millwall manager, Alex Neil, during a press conference largely devoted to downplaying the significance of the fixture. It’s no surprise, given the very real possibility his side could return to the top flight for the first time since Tony Cascarino and Teddy Sheringham enjoyed a successful big man/slightly-less-big man partnership and were banging in goals at the Den for fun. The pick of the 3pm kick-offs tomorrow is at the Hawthorns, where unheralded low-key promotion hopefuls Wrexham will continue their playoff push against West Brom. The Baggies finally decided to give James Morrison something and have enjoyed back-to-back wins after failing to win their previous 13 games under different gaffers.
